All posts tagged augmented reality

Undaunted by the controversy surrounding the Hewlett-Packard Co. purchase of Autonomy Corp., former Autonomy Chief Executive Mike Lynch continues to expand the investments made by his venture-capital firm, Invoke Capital Partners.

The company’s second investment, Taggar, describes itself as “the first social augmented-reality platform.” Think of it as user comments being added to everything in the world. Invoke didn’t release details on the size of the deal.

Augmented reality (AR) isn’t new, not even for Mr. Lynch. One of Autonomy’s main products is Aurasma, an augmented-reality platform.

Augmented reality is generally seen as a way to blend together live images from a smartphone or tablet computer’s camera with additional information on the devices screen. It can be impressive, but it frequently feels as if it is a solution in search of a problem.

There is no shortage of augmented reality apps. You can, for instance, use it to see streets overlaid with travel guides on your smartphone screen, to find fairies in the garden or to watch videos triggered by advertisements printed in a magazine or newspaper.

Google’s version of augmented reality (AR) made the news recently. Its Project Glass is developing eyeglasses on which information displays can be overlayed on to a user’s view of the real world.

It is not a new idea. A growing number of apps allow you to point a smartphone’s camera at a scene and see on the screen a combination of the real world and visual information. You might, for example, aim your smartphone at a historic building and have its Wikipedia entry overlayed on the screen.

Austrian company Wikitude has been one of the pioneers with its travel guides which have been using AR since 2008. It has just released a new version of its AR technology, as SlashGear reports:

Trying to catch fairies in your garden seems as far removed from a traditional “shoot-’em-up” game as it could possibly be. But the actual game play is not all that different. It still involves rapidly tapping the screen to perform actions.

Faerie Planet, however, is definitely aimed at young girls. Using augmented-reality, the fairies appear to be flying around the house ready to be caught.

It might not make compelling television, but scientists are working on technology that could fundamentally alter the way crime scene investigators work. Equipping local police with augmented-reality eyeglasses would enable them to tag and record a crime scene while a C.S.I. watched from the office.

The system, being developed by Oytun Akman and colleagues at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, consists of a head-mounted display receiving 3D video from a pair of attached cameras controlled by a laptop carried in a backpack. This arrangement lets the wearer see their surroundings as normal while also allowing them to overlay virtual objects, which are placed using hand gestures.

Layar, based in Amsterdam, is one of the pioneers of augmented reality on smartphones. Its technology overlays text, graphics or sound onto images from the smartphone’s camera viewed in real time on the screen.

It has now introduced a consumer app called “Stiktu,” which enables users to combine digital images with real images and share them. A short video produced by Layar offers examples.

A Stiktu user looks through his or her smartphone camera at a picture of the Parthenon to which he adds a virtual “For Sale” sign. Another user of the app, holding a smartphone over the picture, sees the jokey addition. (The humor of this example has already annoyed one Facebook fan of Layar.) Reuters explained the background to the launch of Stiktu …

It will at least be an interesting test of dexterity for Dublin’s commuters as they attempt to hold a free daily newspaper in one hand while pointing a smartphone at it with the other. Their reward will be video provided by the news program “fyi”.

No scanning or photo taking is needed, users simply hold their device up to (or hover over) anything ‘blippable’ for an instant response, such as a web link, video, coupon, a 3D product experience or an augmented reality game.

Metro Herald will also be using Blippar across additional editorial content, including a Guilty Pleasures daily poll, daily crossword answers, email the Mailbox (letters page) and by blipping the masthead, readers will be able to see an introductory video explaining how Blippar works, again produced by “fyi”.

Our Tech Leader 25 group identified “augmented reality” as a key future trend but actually it isn’t a future trend at all, it is already here.

Raimo Van der Klein is the CEO of Layar, based here in Amsterdam. Layar was one of the very first to deliver AR to your mobile phone. It has been a struggle, says Mr. Van der Klein, but they are getting there.

The company is working on two products that take AR in a slightly different direction. You can now interact with any object, brand or, well…anything really. It bridges the gap between the real world and the virtual world.

It gets pretty complicated—but the implications of what AR is doing are quite significant.

For those not familiar with Layar, it is a platform that allows anyone to build an AR app. You use your mobile phone’s camera to view the world and since your phone knows where you are and what you are looking at, you can inject additional information and features into the image.

Anyone could build apps on the platform, all Layar did was to provide the technology to allow it to happen. What people did with it was up to them.

One of the most popular uses was an app that allows you to view a street through your camera and it tells you the house prices. Another gives you directions to the nearest ATM.

According to Mr. Van der Klein the first iteration of Layar wasn’t enough

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